Can I have multiple Wireless Routers?

Dave, I’m trying to get my local network set up and can’t figure out whether one wireless router will pick up a signal from the other so, say, you could
stretch the distance a wireless signal reaches? And if they do talk to
each other, would it speed up or slow down things?

And a related question: does the distance a signal travels matter, whether the
indoors signal has to travel up from a basement onto a second floor of the
house, vs. having the router on the same floor with computers using it?

You can definitely use Wifi boosters to extend your network. A neat solution in this regard is the Apple Airport Express device: plug it into the wall anywhere in your house and it’ll automatically detect an existing wireless network and extend its range further. There are plenty of other options, of course.

The distance a signal travels matters in the same way that DSL speed is affected by how far it has to go down the phone line before it gets to your modem. Having said that, you probably won’t see the problem too much, though if you’re asking about a repeater, well, maybe you are seeing this problem.

My office wireless network — based on the faster 802.11g protocol — extends sufficiently far that I can go to a café elsewhere in the building and still see it. At home, my base station is in the basement and yet I can easily work online anywhere in the house or yard. I’ve even sat in my car in the driveway and been online (don’t ask!)

The 802.11b technology (11Mbps wireless in WiFi) travels about 300 feet in open spaces. It’s sometimes considered a “two wall” technology, meaning going through two walls is the best you can hope for the signal. Wall composition matters too (a concrete wall with reinforced metal bars, for example, is more problematic than a typical wood frame and plasterboard interior wall in a house), and newer protocols are extending the range of wireless networks too.

External antennas also help, as do new higher-powered PC Cards such as the SMC Networks SMC2532W-B card. It uses a more powerful transmitter/receiver and increased a colleagues signal strength in limited testing by about 50 percent. And 802.11g lets you add repeaters and additional antennas to extend that distance.

Oh! One more point: if you have a dual-antenna base station, position your antennas pointing in different directions to maximize the extend of your wireless field. I have one pointing at approximately one o’clock and the other at about nine o’clock.

Hope that helps you out!

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I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by
buying you a cup of coffee!

18 comments on “Can I have multiple Wireless Routers?”

I have 1 netgear and 1 linksys router hooked up to my modem, both routers are giving wireless access to several computers – we had a problem in that we thought both routers had to have static IP’s but it turns out that only one can have a static IP (or at least the same static IP) – now, one of them has a dynamic IP address (DNS remains static) and everything works again… the static IP requirement is because we have a company and local rules require this.

I’m not entirely sure what you are looking for, but…
Some wireless routers have a feature that allows them to function as a wireless repeater or extender. Essentially, when this feature is enabled, it connects to the first router and connects the devices that connect to it to the first router.

Hi Dave,
I’m interested in this post as it relates to a continuing issue in our small (1 story, 1040 sq.’ house). We have 1 laptop Vista, wired as my husband is sick of falling off the wireless router (a Linksys WCG200 Gateway wired/wiress b/g router); a wired Velocity monster PC and a wireless Toshiba laptop that drops off all the time (I refuse to wire my Toshiba laptop, what’s the point?!). I am phasing that laptop out as it’s slowly dying, and use an iPad (wifi, not 3G). The iPad kicks the two wired members off pretty frequently. So I’m thinking I should get a separate wireless router (n?) for the iPad but connect as a device to the Linksys router so we’ll have one IP. Any suggestions of what to get for my iPad to connect to the LAN/Linksys router and keep everyone happy/on the network? I can’t figure out if I need to update the firmware on this Linksys perhaps…maybe it’s having trouble with the iPad? Thanks! Jean

MCSA, that’s interesting. Can you supply me with a URL? I write every single article from scratch and can guarantee that this particular article was about *my* office and *my* network. If the same article is on Ehelp, obviously they ripped it off from me. And the date/time stamp? That’s something that the admin sets, so it’s obviously trivial to “back date” the publication six months. Fortunately, Google isn’t as easily tricked…

I work for a company providing internet to clients and came across this thread.. our current wireless network barely and inconsistenly reaches one outer corner of our service area. It travels through many walls in our building, what would be the best way to provide better coverage for the distant end. We’re broadcasting G btw. I was expecting to hook up a second wireless router, however if the Airport Expresses work with windows OS, that might be the way to go. Thoughts?

OKAY, i came to this site looking for an answer to the question and i didn’t get one. So i played around a little bit and figured out two things.
Some Routers have an option to work as an access point instead of a router.
&
This is what i did:
I have two wireless routers on one wired network in my house
I have my original G router and my new N1 router.
I left the G in place and pluged in the N1 to the wired network…
I went into the setup info for the new N1 and set it’s gateway, ip, and dns info to talk to my G router just like if i was setting up a new computer on my network.
It works great…
so, YES you can have multiple wireless routers on a network… but just save yourself the trouble and look up wireless access points…. much easier.

Just want to chime in about the Airport Express. an Airport Express can only “EXTEND” a network if the other device is an Airport Base Station or another Airport Express. You can not “EXTEND” a network router that is not one of those to Apple products. You can however JOIN a network but that doesn’t extend the network.
Hope that helps.

Well if you have multiple WiFi simple follow this network cabling.
Modem —-> WiFiRouter 1 (WAN Port)
WiFiRouter 1(Gateway) —- > WiFiRouter 2 (Lan Port)
Say you have network which extends linear in lenght
WiFiRouter 2 —- > WiFiRouter 3 (Lan Port)
Note* For Router 2 & 3 no need to use WAN port since you want all the pc connected to it in the same network, so use it as a simple switch.
Even if your connected to ROuter 2 or 3 you gateway will still be router 1.http://www.vTalk2.com

I am not a tech expert but I do have 2 wireless routers on my home network + 1 wired (a Vonage router). Cable modem is connected to wired router and two wireless routers connected to wired router – did not have to do anything to DHCP settings – works like a charm.

“What steps if needed to conncect the second WL router with printer server to my existing home network?”
You need to have routers that support a feature called “(WDS) Wireless Distribution System”, which allows a point to point link to be established between two or more access points or WiFi routers.
There are expensive business grade routers that support this but if you don’t wanna spend $1000+ you can take a look at , it’s a modified firmware version for the LinkSys WRT54G and WRT54GS WiFi routers.

I think he is completely avoiding the question because he doesn’t even know. Even during the CCNA training I have been in doesnt cover this. Unfortunatly I have the same problem, but I have had some success by turning the DHCP service on one of the two routers off, and giving one of the routers a static internal IP address and leaving the WAN port unused. You’re kinda lucky in your predicament. LOL! I am stuck on getting 2 routers, and a Host computer to share a dial up connection, and give DHCP data to the other computers, with XP Home.

Dave: You did not answer the question whether we can use two wireless routers on the same network. I bought a second wireless router which has a printer port trying to make the printer available within my net. I could use this one to access the printer. But I already set up my original wireless router to work with the DSL modem. What steps if needed to conncect the second WL router with printer server to my existing home network?